It illustrates very well the Farewell-feeling….. a memorable (Cochrane) meeting in a fabulous country (although these memories will slowly fade away, taken by the sea)

The Diamond in the Cochrane Logo (the result of the metaanalysis) is standardly called Wybertje by the director of the Dutch Cochrane Centre, because its format resembles a Dutch liquorice with that name. (if you don’t believe me, then read the text of his oration speech: “Hoe sterk is het eenzame bewijs” (“how strong is the solitary evidence”, which alludes to a Dutch song)

Perhaps because he is fond of liquorice and sweets, coworkers once gave him M &M’s with the Cochrane logo on it (below is a photo-shopped version).

I also like to play with the Cochrane Logo. For instance, when I gave a presentation at the OLVG, a Dutch hospital, I changed the O into the Cochrane logo (left: the OLVG logo, right: the logo in my presentation)

While doing research for an online educational resource I write for, I ran across your blog and thought you may be interested in an idea for a post I have been thinking about.

The fate of schools in California is tied to the financial health of the state and because of years of economic downturn and recession, the state can no longer support the schools and the price of tuition is skyrocketing. This is making attending college considerably more difficult for many qualified applicants.

I would love to write about this for your blog. Let me know if you’re interested and I will send you a full outline.

Thanks!

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Lately I’m also informed about dead links at my blog. How kind. Three guesses which link is offered instead…..

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Hi Laika Spoetnik,

I came across your website and wanted to notify you about a broken link on your page in case you weren’t aware of it. The link on http://laikaspoetnik.wordpress.com/2009/06 which links to http://www.visi.com/juan/congress is no longer working. I’ve included a link to a useful page on Members of Congress that you could replace the broken link with if you’re interested in updating your website. Thanks for providing a great resource!

“Finding and aggressively treating non-symptomatic disease that would never have made people sick, inventing new conditions and re-defining the thresholds for old ones: will there be anyone healthy left at all?”

I invite you to go and visit Hilda’s blog “Statistically funny“(Commenting on the science of unbiased health research with cartoons) and to enjoy her cartoons, that are often inspired by recent publications in the field.

As a teenager I found it hard to picture the 3D structure of DNA, proteins and other molecules. Remember we didn’t have a computer then, no videos, nor 3D-pictures or 3D models.

I tried to fill the gap, by making DNA-molecules of (used) matches and colored clay, based on descriptions in dry (and dull 2D) textbooks, but you can imagine that these creative 3D clay figures beard little resemblance to the real molecular structures.

But luckily things have changed over the last 40 years. Not only do we have computers and videos, there are also ready-made molecular models, specially designed for education.